Erick Wujcik's Greatest Error?

SunBoy · August 10, 2009, 04:08:37 AM

Quote from: finarvyn;319577Y'know Erick posted on my forum and "sanctioned" it as well, but I figure that once he's gone the torch doesn't burn any more.

Did you read "this was the ONLY forum he ever sanctioned" anywhere in my post? Because I'm pretty sure I was making the opposite point. I really think that the question of who did what in whose forum is secondary, the primary point I was trying to make was in favour of the game itself. That's where the "official" part comes in. It stands to reason that any forum "officially" sanctioned by Mr. Wujcik (like yours and this one, or the mailing list) will have a more prominent standing among the fan community than any others, therefore, if there is actually any good that can come from Internet fan support to a game like Amber, then it will come from these forums. That's what I meant by "torch". I am trying, to the best of my abilities and with full conscience of the negligibility of my opinion's weight, to be constructive.

finarvyn · August 10, 2009, 09:52:55 AM

Quote from: SunBoy;319653Did you read "this was the ONLY forum he ever sanctioned" anywhere in my post? Because I'm pretty sure I was making the opposite point.

No, of course not, and my apologies if my post came off as an attack. In re-reading I see that it was my poor word choice of "torch" that causes the problem -- I wasn't paying attention to the fact that you had just used a "carry the torch" phrase and should have chosen other words. It was not my intent to blast your post. :-(

My point was that there are at least four "officially sanctioned" boards that I know of (this one, mine, GoO's while it lasted, and another one Erick used to post on regularly but is gone now and whose name totally escapes my mind at the moment) and the mailing list which is slightly different but official, but this doesn't mean that the Diceless By Design folks need to frequent any or all of them if they don't want to. When they establish their own forum, that one will become the only one that really matters because it will then be the center of the Amberverse.

Quote from: SunBoy;319653if there is actually any good that can come from Internet fan support to a game like Amber, then it will come from these forums. That's what I meant by "torch". I am trying, to the best of my abilities and with full conscience of the negligibility of my opinion's weight, to be constructive.

I agree, and I think we're really saying the same thing in essence. We need to keep the game alive by keeping Amber Diceless discussion alive on as many forums as possible and by trying to keep a positive "spin" on things for as long as possible.

SunBoy · August 10, 2009, 08:02:07 PM

Brilliant.

RPGPundit · August 13, 2009, 07:38:15 PM

I will say, AGAIN; that I'm absolutely committed to the success of Amber 2e, and would be willing to help DbyD in any way possible.
I've been saying that for two years now, and more, and never gotten a single response.

And as for sanction, there's a difference between "Its good that you guys did this forum, I approve", and "Erick Wujcik has declared this the Official Amber DRPG forum". He did this out of friendship to me and out of confidence that I'd be able to keep Amber RPG discussion alive, and yes, out of approval of my perspectives on Amber and RPGs.

RPGPundit

RPGPundit · August 13, 2009, 07:42:33 PM

Quote from: fizzbinn;319058They do communicate with the Amber fandom. Both Eric and Edwin attend at least two Ambercons every year, as well as other gaming conventions. They both run a lot of games at the cons.

They've held at least two meetings/round-tables talking about some of their ideas and how they want to get input from Amber players.

Every time the question has come up on the Amber mailing list Edwin has replied promptly.

It's true they're not visible on this particular forum, but then this is the place the owner/administrator/moderator calls them "useless fucks".

They only got called that after TWO years of:
A) Not doing anything or producing anything at all visible as a result of their being in charge of the Amber RPG .
B) having over and over again ignored any of my invitations to discussion and offers of assistance.

They may be on a mailing list, and that's great. If its 1997. But its not, its 2009; and they have NO web presence whatsoever. No website. No forums. No writing on forums. No press releases. NOTHING.

If the point is to engage in "outreach" and not just chitchat with their ambercon buddies, its really being missed.

RPGPundit

RPGPundit · August 13, 2009, 07:46:04 PM

Quote from: gabriel_ss4u;319219Whatever, they said they'd post info on this forum, that was about 2 yrs. ago, so it makes them look like lying bastards... is that going to keep them from doing what they said?

I should, for the sake of accuracy, clarify that the DbyD guys never said they'd post here; they never said ANYTHING. Not once.
This, in spite of the fact that Erick Wujcik had made plain to me that he had personally told them about this place and me, and that I'd repeatedly, at least a half-dozen times, tried to get in touch with them.

QuoteI see no effort on their part as they stated they'd update us.

Now, what they DID say they'd do, on their website, was to update the DbyD website and have a bunch of information and material. And that is something that can be legitimately stated they've failed to keep their word on.

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Tarondor · August 17, 2009, 08:18:11 PM

Hello. This is my first post on this forum and in fact my first Amber DRPG contact in about six years. I used to run the Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth campaign online. I was inspired to look into the state of the game after playing an Amber game at GenCon last week.

I'm dismayed by the dismal state of the game, but also by the dismal state of the fandom. Not to say the fans, of course, just a comment on their lack of visibility. Do you know how hard it is to find anything on the game less than a decade old when searching online? One could easily think the game went the way of Metamorphosis Alpha (except that M.A. is back in print). So I'm glad to see this forum.

I recognize Erick's seminal importance in the creation of the game, but he really did little to guide or aid it after giving it birth (Shadow Knight aside). I don't know the Diceless by Design guys, but I accept at face value the assertion that they are huge Amber fans. Aren't we all? The problem is not necessarily their dedication or their creative talent (both of which might be enormous for all I know), but their business acumen and possibly experience. All businesses are difficult to run well, and guys who don't have incomes for a long time are not going to be able to publish a quality product.

I know at least four or five game designers who have been talking about their half-finished games for a boringly long time. That's not how real business gets done. If those products are ever brought to print, it will be too little, far too late.

I call on the owners of Diceless by Design to seek aid. Sure, lots of it is available on these forums and elsewhere in the form of creative ability, but that's not what I'm talking about. DbyD needs help from someone who is both an Amber fan and who has experience with publishers and running businesses. They need someone who will run that business with a ruthless dedication and get it done. Get help, fellas!

Ivanhoe · August 18, 2009, 10:54:31 AM

Long time I didn't post here. Long time I didn't play Amber either. It is good to see people still passionate about it.

I find it ironic that the guys who own the rights on ADRPG say they are committed to the community while saying that it will cost them money to do anything. If they can't manage to make a reprint of the first ed (that was the one that got us completely hoked to the game) then just released it for free to anyone to download. Please don't let it die. I had to pirate my first copy before i could buy a second-hand one (70$) on eBay. It costs a single statement that takes ten minutes to write in legalese stating "The Amber diceless RPG book is now in the public domain, and free for anyone to distribute freely. The Amber settings still is the property to XXX"

A long time ago I set up a wiki for people to make an encyclopedia of Amber. At the time I thought I would have spare time to fill it but, well, I changed job a week later... It is still at amberpedia.free.fr and fairly spared by the Chinese spamming bots. It doesn't have a lot of content. I wouldn't mind if people wanted to wipe it out to make a fresh project on it. I won't have much time to follow it, but this site will stay the same. I can be reached at yvanhoe@free.fr but you'll have to put a [FromWebsite] in your message body to get past my spam filters.

RPGPundit · August 19, 2009, 04:11:17 PM

I'm not sure, but it might be that they could not release the book for free due to licensing issues; even so, they could also have monetary interest in not releasing the book for free; but then they should really get onto re-releasing the book for sale.

RPGPundit

Ivanhoe · August 23, 2009, 02:35:02 PM

This is things like this that makes one wonder why copyrights are heritable. Heirs are usually less dedicated to the works of an author than its fans.

SunBoy · August 23, 2009, 04:05:34 PM

Private property, the origin of all evil.

Tarondor · August 24, 2009, 03:05:58 AM

Quote from: Ivanhoe;323143This is things like this that makes one wonder why copyrights are heritable. Heirs are usually less dedicated to the works of an author than its fans.

Because authors are more dedicated to their heirs than to some unknown fans?

ikay · August 24, 2009, 03:42:54 PM

Quote from: jdurall;318903The Amber E-Mail List (http://leutheuser.com/amber/) has been around for something like 17 years or more...

I was afraid you meant that one. I can't join it, I have no idea why, but every e-mail I send gets bounced. And I try several times a year...
Anybody here who can help me with this?

Klaus · August 29, 2009, 03:05:28 PM

I can't really blame DbyD for not adopting this forum. For one thing, putting someone else in charge of your forums is a terrible idea.

For another, well, when my brother came home from California on leave he had forgotten the name of this forum, but was able to refer to it as "that forum where the moderator calls everyone swine" and I instantly knew what he meant. No one can questions RPGPundit's dedication to the game, but this does not look like a good place to convince new people to be part of the ADRPG community or to discuss significant alterations to the rules.

RPGPundit · August 30, 2009, 04:19:44 AM

By all accounts I'd heard from Erick, there was no plan to significantly alter the rules in a second edition.
I think that there's no problem using this forum to discuss house rules or variants. If you use an amber forum to talk about how the Amber game itself should be changed into Nobilis or something, then that's just douchebag-behaviour.

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